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Ideas Versus? Identity

For the past couple of years I have been toying with writing a big piece about what is now known as “neo-reaction” or the “alternative right” (or “alt-right” for short.) I have been a regular reader of a variety of their writers and websites on and off for years beginning, of course, with the infamous Mencius Moldbug. All of the sudden, coinciding with the success of the Trump candidacy, it seems like everyone and their brother is writing the definitive ’take-down’ of the “alt-right” or explaining just what neo-reaction is all about or why we should all be scared of their ideas.

The truth is that for the most part I’ve grown bored with neo-reaction and grown tired of the alt-right’s hostility to Christianity, their racism and often their lack of basic decorum. In the above links you will find all sorts of different definitions for the two phenomenon, with authors sometimes conflating the two ideas and other times mixing up meanings and/or getting basic facts wrong. While I’m not an expert on the two trends, I have been reading their authors for many years and feel secure enough in my knowledge to offer this as a fair definition of neo-reaction:

a political worldview and intellectual movement based largely on the ideas of Mencius Moldbug. Neoreactionary thought can be roughly broken into three major areas:

WORLDVIEW

Modern history is an epic tale of social decay under chronically bad government, masked by increasing technological wealth. The dominant liberal-progressive ideology is badly out of touch with reality, and actively destructive to civilization.

Our society's elite factions are coordinated enough to distort public knowledge of society to neutralize threats to their power, but not enough to rule efficiently and responsibly. Traditional and organic modes of sociopolitical organization could remedy our problems, but we are held back by this weaponized self-conception and lack of competent authority.

RESTORATION PROGRAM

The core of our problem is that there is no one with the secure authority to fix things. The core of our solution is to find a man, and put him in charge, with a real chain of command, and a clear ownership structure.

Real leadership would undertake a proper corporate restructuring of USG: Pardon and retire all employees of the old regime; formalize obligations as simple financial instruments; nationalize and restructure the banks, media, and universities; and begin the long slow process of organic cultural recovery from centuries of dysfunction.

PASSIVIST STRATEGY

American globalist liberalism is an unsustainable mess. Everyone knows it, but no one will admit it until someone builds a concrete superior alternative.

Anything but patient work on a worthy new system is a harmful distraction. Rebellion, violence, and activism just create more chaos, and don't get us any closer to restoration.

The only viable path to restoration of competent government is the simple and hard way:

1. Become worthy.
2. Accept power.
3. Rule.

The alt-right is a different creature – newer on the scene and really growing in popularity in conjunction with Trump’s candidacy, the alt-right is made up of writers as well as hundreds of Twitter users, commenters on blogs, people who make You-Tube videos, etc. who are alienated from today’s conservative movement and are looking for a radical alternative – what shape that alternative ultimately takes is less clear. They are generally open to using the electoral system (which is why they are interested in Trump’s candidacy as well as right-wing movements in Europe) and they like to take action against their progressive (or insufficiently conservative) foes.

Many, if not most, of the alt-right is nasty – they are anti-Semitic, they are hostile to Christianity, and relish vulgar combat with the left or anyone who they consider their enemy. At times, the neo-reactionaries get lumped in with the alt-right (like this article referenced in the Cathy Young piece I linked to earlier does.) While I do think there is some overlap, I think it is probably more useful and honest to keep the two groups separate and distinct. For example, it is certainly true that at times Mencius could be vulgar; but he never took to Twitter to harass his enemies, he explicitly denounced anti-Semitism, and he rejected all activism including electoral politics.

Needless to say, I reject just about everything the alt-right stands for and I’m not that fond of neo-reaction either. I haven’t given up on the American experiment in constitutional, republican democracy and I certainly won’t give an inch to any of the fools on the alt-right when it comes to the question of whether or not “all men are created equal” or whether they “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights” (or as I prefer, “Created in the image of the one God and equally endowed with rational souls, all men have the same nature and the same origin. Redeemed by the sacrifice of Christ, all are called to participate in the same divine beatitude: all therefore enjoy an equal dignity. The equality of men rests essentially on their dignity as persons and the rights that flow from it.” CC 1934-1935)

And yet, you’ll notice I carefully use the words “just about everything” – leaving room for some agreement. That’s because I think there is one central insight that I share with the neo-reactionaries, the alt-right, and probably a wide swath of the traditional conservative movement in America as well: that despite the insistence on our equality before God, it is apparent that we do not share an equality of abilities or talent and indeed, the distribution of these abilities and talents are unevenly distributed among the races of men across the planet in such a way that certain races (or ethnic groups if your prefer) are unequal in civilizational accomplishments and their ability to assimilate to Western norms.

Let me draw out the implications of this insight in some detail. To begin, I will take it as given that racial/ethnic groups do exist – whatever bad left-wing anthropology professor you’ve read who has said otherwise is just plain wrong – the genetic science is settled and getting better and better at teasing out genetic markers for Croatians versus Columbians versus Cambodians (heck, it is getting better at teasing out differences among Castilians and Catalonians.) Second, it is clear that how these genetic differences express themselves (phenotypes) include everything from our skin color to our hair to our muscle structure to our intelligence, personalities, and character traits. That doesn’t mean we don’t have free will or are doomed to be slow or smart or strong just because our parents were Chinese or Costa Rican or Cameroonian – these phenotypes express themselves as averages distributed within each population. As the leftists like to crow, there is indeed wide variation within a particular race when it comes to any specific trait; however, almost all of these same traits are normally distributed and exhibit different means for different populations – which is why those same leftists get their smelling salts out] when it is pointed out that black IQ is one standard deviation lower than the average white IQ (or to make things more complicated, the average person of European descent.) Therefore no matter how many times a liberal yells disparate impact, or historical legacy of racism, or unfair advantage due to slavery, etc., etc. we will always see school scores of white kids and white adult income and white achievement outpace black scores, income, and achievement at the group level.

What else does this uncomfortable fact about group differences tell us? Well, much of the current immigration discussion is a concern about the ability of various racial/ethnic groups to successfully integrate into the United States. Take for example, the infamous comments from Donald Trump about Mexican immigration and our southern border:

When do we beat Mexico at the border? They’re laughing at us, at our stupidity. And now they are beating us economically. They are not our friend, believe me. But they’re killing us economically. The U.S. has become a dumping ground for everybody else’s problems…. When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.

Obviously from context, Trump’s “They’re rapists” does not mean, as often alleged, “They’re all rapists.” Instead, he’s raising the apparently excessively subtle question: “Why, with all the world to choose from, do we let immigrate any rapists?”

[…]

Moreover, it’s striking how few in the press demonstrated any understanding of Trump’s statement “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best.”

The obvious question ought to be: Who is the “they” in that sentence?

“One reason that nobody in the U.S. pays attention to Mexico is because Mexican elites have wanted it that way.” Clearly, Trump is accusing the Mexican ruling class—the politicians and billionaires like Carlos Slim, the largest single shareholder of The New York Times—of dumping their surplus population on the United States.

Aside from the rather subtle point about Mexican elites, what about that “surplus population” Steve refers to offhandedly – do we have any evidence or confidence that they will assimilate into the United States as past generations of European immigrants have assimilated? Actually, we don’t – the evidence we do have suggests second, third and later generations of Mexican (and Central American) immigrants fail to achieve the success that their neighbors have achieved – they score lower on scholastic measures, they have lower incomes, and they have higher levels of criminal activity (our own former colleague Steve Burton did yeoman’s work back in the day demonstrating that Ron Unz’s analysis of Hispanic criminality, which Unz thought was no worse than white crime levels in the U.S., was deeply flawed and inconsistent with the facts.)

Even worse, for those of us interested in civic cohesion and comity, are the increasing signs that large ethnic minorities in the U.S. are breaking down civic bonds at the same time we are doing a bad job of inculcating patriotic values (e.g. appreciation for American history, knowledge of the Constitution, an understanding of Western Civilization, etc.) – see this devastating report from the Hudson Institute and Robert Putnam’s work on how diversity leads to more “bowling alone.”

Of course, this little preceding discussion has only considered our racial/ethnic friends in Central America; the concerns and problems only grow bigger when thinking about immigration from all over the Third World, including the Muslim world (as this blog has faithfully chronicled over the years.) One of my favorite quotes on the subject remains Pat Buchanan’s comment that

If we had to take a million immigrants in, say Zulus, next year, or Englishmen, and put them up in Virginia, what group would be easier to assimilate and would cause less problems for the people of Virginia?

The fact that liberals would find this question disturbing or troubling or dare I say it, racist, is just plain silly.

Since Pat’s quote mentions Englishmen, this is a good time to finally wrap up this post and bring up the most controversial question of all – are our political ideas themselves and their very survival doomed if we take in large numbers of any racial/ethnic group besides the northern Europeans (English, Scottish, Scandinavian, or Dutch) who seem to be the most congenial to our way of life? Here we come to the question that some of the most interesting neo-reactionaries have been asking for the past couple of years:

Since the Enlightenment, we have been operating under the premise that it is ideas that matter, not the people who hold them. America, Europa were defined by their propositions, and no thought was given to the people who dreamed up those propositions and maintained them. This Age of Ideas is drawing to a close. We are now entering the Age of Identity, as poor old Bernie Sanders found out in Seattle and Baltimore. We like our socialism nationalist, is the message black nationalists are screaming at old-school trade unionists like Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Whitopia). And now a new theme begins to spread across the political landscape: while we're spreading the green around, why not show some love for the white Americans who still, albeit tenuously, constitute the democratic majority? These are the people beginning to show up for Donald Trump.

[…]

Trump has injected a long-simmering issue into the presidential campaign that all the Establishment-candidates and their slick consultants and pundits have been paid not to think about since the 1960's. Immigration truly is the Last Question of Western politics. Taxes per se do not really matter: around half of us are net tax consumers; the US government runs an annual deficit of hundreds of billions of dollars per year; and in no event will government ever be able to capture more than around one-third of actual GDP in taxes. The Constitution does not matter; it's a piece of paper that means whatever the regime says it means. The Culture War does not matter; a Republican Congress cannot even bestir itself to cut off Planned Parenthoood or kick transvestites out of the military.

All that really matters, in the end, is who gets to live where. In more primal terms, it's about Blood and Soil, and always has been. The Pueblos, carving holes in sheer cliff faces to keep away from their neighbors understood it; Jewish settlers and their Palestinian neighbors in the West Bank understand it. The warring factions in Syria understand it.

Most people all over the world over understand it. It is only Westerners, living in a prosperous, post-Enlightenment dreamscape who think pure, incorporeal ideas are what's holding it all together. When a critical mass of a country's people are higher-g, lower time-preference, you get Rhodesia. When the mean shifts toward lower-g, higher time-preference, it's Zimbabwe. The boorish, uncouth Trump, of all people, is the only one pointing out that Americans are what make America, and it has caught the financial and cognitive elites absolutely flatfooted. [from The Anti-Gnostic blog, August 21, 2015]

The Anti-Gnostic is an interesting writer because he is an Orthodox Christian and so he approaches this question (ideas versus identity) from a Christian perspective, as opposed to many of the alt-right or other neo-reactionaries that tend to a nihilistic worldview based on their rejection of God. Indeed, as a Christian he has thought about what Christian ethics and the Great Commission mean in the context of a fallen world of many identities – something that is particularly interesting for the Orthodox faith which has been traditionally identified (no pun intended) with individual nations and national churches (i.e. Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, Armenian Orthodox, etc.) He has specifically addressed these concerns in an older post that deals with a member of the Orthodox faith that was excommunicated for espousing pro-white nationalist views:

It is allegedly self-evident that Heimbach has committed some sin that has put him out of communion. But so far the only canon I've seen cited is St. Paul's verse, “There is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all, and in all (Colossians 3:11).” Given the Church's support over the centuries for ethnic nations governed by hereditary monarchs, the context of Paul's verse is clear: there is no racial, ethnic or socio-economic qualification for membership in the Kingdom of Heaven. Period. The verse says nothing about the fact that there are Greeks, Jews, Barbarians, Romans and Scythians. There are also, apparently, slaves. Heimbach seems to have been excommunicated more for violating the American secular canon than the Christian one. What if an Orthodox Christian said he or she would not consider marriage to a person of a certain race--would that be a sin? Which sin?

There is a lot of talk in the Orthodox convertoblogosphere about authenticity. Present-day converts will never have the experience of Orthodox in their homelands picnicking in cemeteries and never troubling for an instance over which church is the Church. A Church Local, wedded to her nation, is not something to which one can simply convert. She is the end result of generations of extended family in an institution with a monopoly on Christian worship which baptizes, marries and buries in the true faith. We can strive as devoutly as we want, and we should, but in the present it is still just rote worship. We live in hope that our children and children's children ad seriatim will stay in the Church and after successive generations be the people for whom there is no other Church. For we in the present though, the "authentic" part will have to come later, as our spiritual bequest to our descendants. That's the difference between a mature Church, and a Church that's just one of any number of sects.

Given how things are proceeding in the World, with marriage and childbearing and everything else reduced entirely to individual preference, the behaviors of our progeny will be (we hope and pray) in striking contrast with their peers. They will act differently, think differently, and will have little in common with those outside their circle. This is how nations are birthed. You can start with as big an ethnic grab bag as you want, but the end result of assortative mating is still a group of people with common ancestry. This is what happens if we're successful by the way, because otherwise we disappear, or we hang on as another propositional denomination with a revolving door of middle-aged converts.

This sort of talk is of course completely alien to most American Christians, Orthodox or otherwise. For them, it's still 33 A.D. and we've got to roll up our sleeves and evangelize the pagan Empire. Surely, the thinking goes, when family, friends, neighbors, co-workers see our piety, our love, our enthusiasm, they will enter the parish doors by the dozens, thousands, millions! In the convert's zeal, it doesn't occur to him that everybody else--Baptists, Episcopalians, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Catholics--is telling himself the same thing. And so are the Muslims, Hindus, Jews and Buddhists. Contra Niche has remarked that Christian mission probably has a conversion-to-contact ratio well below ten percent. With those numbers, Orthodoxy would be better off taking every dollar and resource devoted to evangelism and instead directly subsidizing young, Orthodox families so they'll fill the pews with their kids and aunts and uncles and grandparents.

All this talk about Local Churches, kinship and inter-generational tradition gets uncomfortable pretty quick. Orthodox converts falling over each other to condemn Heimbach certainly want their "smells and bells" street-cred, but being secular Americans first and foremost, they also want what Laurence Auster termed the unprincipled exception to their rock-ribbed creed. Auster was of course skewering the liberals' escape hatch from their categorical imperative of blank-slate egalitarianism. For example, people are just people, except when I'm shopping for housing in super-majority white/Asian school districts. Or when I'm gentrifying my hip, white enclave in Brooklyn for crafting artisanal chocolate that nobody in pre-gentrified Brooklyn could ever afford.

There is a lot to digest in this long quote – for now I want to focus my attention on two points. The first is that I think that Anti-Gnostic is correct as a matter of theology and philosophy: one can be a faithful, small “o” orthodox Christian and still believe that individual racial/ethnic groups are good in themselves as expressions of God’s unique creation. Wanting to protect and preserve your own group identity via expressions of racial/ethnic solidarity can be good and ethical. The problem, of course, remains that such expressions can indeed come at the expense of other groups – which is why I part ways with many on the alt-right in believing that the sin of racism is real and that racial hatred in indeed evil and wrong. So there is a tricky balancing act and Christians especially need to be mindful of how they approach this subject.

But the bigger question, derived from both of Anti-Gnostic’s posts, remains whether or not it is true that one’s group identity will ultimately drive group ideology – without Europeans are Africans doomed to Zimbabwe? Or if America keeps importing Central Americans will we turn into an ersatz Mexico, Honduras or El Salvador? You will perhaps not be surprised to find that my own answer to this question is both yes and no. Yes, I think without a doubt that ideology is indeed influenced by identity. It is not by chance or accident that the Industrial Revolution started where it did or that Western Civilization accomplished all that it has.

However, I also think is important that we don’t stop here in our analysis because it is true that ideas can and do influence people and groups of people in important ways – say what you will about Russian or Chinese society, but both would have been much better off (and are today much better off) without experimenting with communism for a spell. Likewise with Venezuela, which we can imagine someday enjoying a standard of living closer to neighboring Columbia than the mess they suffer from now. And when we compare the racial/ethnic make-up of a place like Venezuela with Columbia, we don’t find dramatic differences (similar national IQ, although ironically Venezuela has a much higher percentage of white population versus Columbia whose population is mostly Mestizo.) Or think of our own ancestors in Great Britain after WWII – what was a coherent and stable nation (from the standpoint of demography), with a Parliamentary monarchy no less, doing voting for a bunch of Socialist governments and nationalizing major industries? What happened to the rugged individualism of the British who transformed the American continent and colonized most of the known world? It wasn’t a massive demographic change that created the conditions for Clement Attlee!

Clearly ideas and the people and institutions they influence also matter – the real question remains to what extent can you transform a place like Kenya into a place like Chile (or even Canada?) Or is it impossible as a short-term proposition (probably) and the best we can all hope for both as Christians committed to the Great Commission is to continue to hope that the faith grows around the world, do our best to defend the faith at home against domestic enemies, and promote mission work and the long-term hard work of building up the Christian faith in God-forsaken places; while as conservatives recognize the fragility of our Constitutional, republican institutions and like our Christian faith defend them against domestic enemies while using our knowledge of racial/ethnic differences to promote a more realistic sense of what America can absorb with respect to the quality of immigrants we let into the country as well as the quantity. As for those immigrants who remain, we must push for a stronger effort to assimilate newcomers into patriotic norms and knowledge of our republican and Constitutional heritage (which will also require a massive push against all of the political correctness of the Left – but there are signs of hope as Texas is one state that has made progress in changing their curriculum to emphasize the positive aspects of American history.)

We cannot fall into the trap that many European countries have already slipped into – a place like Germany already has elites that think their own heritage is not worth preserving! That link takes you to one of my favorite neo-reactionary writers and is a good place to end this post – as Malcolm Pollack says of the author he is criticizing,

The lines are very clearly drawn here: for Ms. Sauerbrey, culture is not, and clearly must not be, a “natural fact” — an expression of any essential qualities shared by a people of common ancestry. If that were so, it would mean that the people themselves were not identical to all other people — and so would violate the axiom of universality. Because this axiom is, in the West’s secular religion, now a sacred principle, it means that anyone who denies it is promoting heresy, and is therefore an enemy and an existential threat.

Consider everything that Ms. Sauerbrey — a German! — must reject in order to hold this view. Look at the towering edifice of German culture, and the conspicuous particularities of the German people throughout history. Can she really believe that all of that might just as likely have sprung from Dinkas, or Eskimos? Such is the power of religion.

This religion is part of what is wrong with the world – we must be careful in opposing it, but oppose it we must.

Jeffrey S. wrote Needless to say, I reject just about everything the alt-right stands for and I’m not that fond of neo-reaction either. I haven’t given up on the American experiment in constitutional, republican democracy and I certainly won’t give an inch to any of the fools on the alt-right when it comes to the question of whether or not “all men are created equal” or whether they “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights” (or as I prefer, “Created in the image of the one God and equally endowed with rational souls, all men have the same nature and the same origin. Redeemed by the sacrifice of Christ, all are called to participate in the same divine beatitude: all therefore enjoy an equal dignity. The equality of men rests essentially on their dignity as persons and the rights that flow from it.” CC 1934-1935)

"All men are created equal" is a Gnostic Statement! Thomas Jefferson, who wrote that, though not a Mason, regularly visited Masonic meetings and had Masonic and Rosicrucian books in his library. Gnostics war against Particularity. They hate particularity. That Gnosticism has creeped into the Catholic Catechism shows that Catholicism has been compromised with Marxism. Jeffrey S. fails to understand that while all men are called to communion with God in His Church, doesn't stop anybody from being a slave, an aristocrat, or a Monarch, or a commoner. Jeffrey doesn't make a distinction, nor does the CC between the ideology of Christian theology and the Natural Order. As Aristotle said, "some men are natural slaves". That can't be dismissed. Nature follows her own rules. Jeffrey S. shows his Gnosticism. Race is the particularity and races have different characters that Christian ideology doesn't automatically erase. Everything is according to Nature. Gnostics war against Nature. Nature was created by Jesus Christ and God created all the Nations of the earth and made them diverse---different. All men are NOT created equal.

I can't speak to whether or not you are correct about Anti-Gnostic, however, there is more and more evidence that time preference among different race/ethnic groups has indeed been influenced by genetic factors:

I would also argue that traditional conservatives (including the paleos) have been arguing about putting markets in the service of the nation for a much longer time than the alt-right!

Mr. Wheeler,

This will be your only warning -- I do not want this comment thread taken over by your theories on how the Catholic Church has been corrupted by Gnosticism or Marxism. Either you agree that we are all created in the image of God or you don't -- which is what the Declaration is all about and what that quote from the Catechism is all about. Our other differences are indeed part of the natural order (although you and I disagree about some men being "natural slaves") and I acknowledged these differences in my post.

Regardless of what Jefferson meant peraonally by the statement, there were 56 signers of the declaration and I very much doubt they meant by it what Wheeler attributes to Jefferson when he wrote it. We may safely assume, I think, that Jefferson was attempting to speak for the Continental Congress as a whole. Where I peraonally get crossways with Mr. Jefferson is in his autobiography where he brags that the meaning of his religious freedom bill (Virginia House of Burgesses) meant, in modern American bumper sticker vernacular, that "freedom of religion means freedom for ALL religions."

Regarding Cathy Young, as I recall she stepped in it big time. She made a common tactical mistake on the mainstream right which is assume you can attack someone and then act surprised when they retaliate. There is also a not so small measure of entitlement on the part of her and other prominent political Jews to hide behind past crimes against Jews as a way of shouting down your opponent. Mike Cernovich addressed that succinctly by quoting a friend of his who is a committed Zionist who said something to the effect that no one hates Ben Shapiro because he's a Jew; Ben Shapiro is hated because he's a hack and a weasel who hides behind being a Jew. And that is a fair criticism because there is a certain measure of real hypocrisy such as a wall is great for Israel but it is racist and totalitarian if we build one. Ironically, the very reason for both walls is nearly 100% the same for both countries and you don't see Netanyahu making the slightest bit of noise about it because his Zionism is closer to Alt Right nationalism than the "patriotism" of the mainstream right.

Aside from a lot of pointing and shrieking about racism and anti-semitism, I haven't see much of any of that from the Alt-Right. What has been rather educational is how the Alt-Right has been very good at getting "conservatives" to self-identify as liberal-lite by the way that, for instance, they denounce ideas like Mohammed Ali's statement that normal people want children and grandchildren that look like them more than another race. The statistics bear that out; interracial marriage is actually something that the overwhelming majority subconsciously avoid.

What is really the most controversial thing about the Alt-Right is the rejection of the "proposition nation." The mainstream doesn't want to admit that only one culture, British, produced our concepts of rights and meaningfully implemented them. To a large extent the continental immigrants did not understand that Anglo-Saxon/Scottish political culture and so you can look at the immigrant-heavy areas of America and see where those notions were badly eroded. The Boston or NYC of today is not even remotely the Boston or NYC of 1776, and in terms of culture I mean that entirely in a negative sense. We see that manifested in so many ways, right down to the abandonment of the distinctly English discomfort to large bodies of uniformed government agents operating in the community (be they military or paramilitary) rather than relying on the Posse Comitatus.

I think this quote contains a lot of the problem with "conservatives" and why the differences are irreconcilable:

“The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected. Even when the revolutionist might himself repent of his revolution, the traditionalist is already defending it as part of his tradition. Thus we have two great types -- the advanced person who rushes us into ruin, and the retrospective person who admires the ruins. He admires them especially by moonlight, not to say moonshine. Each new blunder of the progressive or prig becomes instantly a legend of immemorial antiquity for the snob. This is called the balance, or mutual check, in our Constitution.”

Conservatism has an intrinsic tragic element to it. The extent of that element varies with the person, but it is part of the disposition. That element manifests itself in a variety of ways, one of which is the notion that we are deeply constrained in how we respond to our enemies who are tearing down civilization. Conservatives often hide behind that because it is hard to be a fighter and the task of defending civilization, let alone building it back, is usually ugly. Not sometimes, almost always. And then they console themselves with the belief that if they fail and die while being better than their opponents God will welcome them and all will be well. However, eternity should not be the primary reason you fight or don't fight now.

What can you really say, in terms of intrinsic evil, these people are guilty of doing? They denounce true bigots forcefully and defend the right of Jews, blacks, etc. to live peacefully and prosperously among their own. In fact they are some of the most forceful defenders of Israel you will find short of a Jewish supremacist as they are consciously aware of Zionism as a form of nationalism and call true Zionists brothers and sisters in the struggle against globalism.

Aside from a lot of pointing and shrieking about racism and anti-semitism, I haven't see much of any of that from the Alt-Right.

Then you are blinder than a bat. Not to say an enabler. What we've deleted from this obscure blog alone, what I have deleted or not moderated through at my obscure personal blog alone shows that there is plenty of it from those quarters.

He also doesn't hesitate to write very nasty and hostile things towards others. Dude still won't apologize for his disgraceful handling of the Trump/Fields issue even after it became obvious that Fields was a nasty little liar in bed with liberal journalists.

But again, it comes down to a childish belief you can start a fight and control your opponent's response. You don't see David Goldman getting anywhere near the criticism and attacks because he doesn't act like a petulant little female dog online, and he is not meek in responding either. He just responds like a man.

"What can you really say, in terms of intrinsic evil, these people are guilty of doing?"

To add to Lydia's comment, many of these folks are racist and anti-Semitic. Not Zionist but Jew-haters. I have myself tried to comment at a website I will not name (famous in alt-right circles) to denounce and argue against the logic (such as it is) of anti-Semitism and was told off as a Jew-lover. The Holocaust memes are not amusing -- but they are more than "nasty or hostile." I could also point you to plenty of racial hatred -- it exists and is not hard to find. Even someone who starts hanging out with these folks gets corrupted -- I know you read Vox Day and I'm sorry to say but when he writes posts essentially defending the murder of immigrants (not to mention the posts where he flirted with defending Breivik) he's gone off the rails and has lost his moral compass. Such are the wages of the alt-right.

I know you read Vox Day and I'm sorry to say but when he writes posts essentially defending the murder of immigrants (not to mention the posts where he flirted with defending Breivik) he's gone off the rails and has lost his moral compass. Such are the wages of the alt-right.

That's outrageous until you realize that the mainstream right defends the nuclear bombing of Japanese civilians as a necessary evil. Every political movement has these blinders on something.

The Holocaust memes are not amusing -- but they are more than "nasty or hostile."

The only group that should even be thinking seriously about the Holocaust is the government of Israel and primarily in regards to how Iran might want to execute a replay of it on them. For everyone else, it is as irrelevant as an issue as the Holodomor or Armenian Genocide.

I could also point you to plenty of racial hatred

And I could probably point you to many conservatives who are more concerned about the possibility of whites becoming tribal than the actual anti-white tribal violence whites increasingly face in the West. There mere idea of whites becoming more aware of their identity, preferring and defending their own precisely as every other group from Jews, to blacks, to Asians do is just horrifying I tell you. Horrible. Hell, some critics of the Alt-Right even cite that they genuinely fear that this could lead to whites systematically dismantling Affirmative Action in its entirety.

The Declaration of Independence is NOT based on Christian teaching but on the Enlightenment ideas; the Enlightenment was a movement of Atheists. No orthodox Catholic contributed to anything of the Enlightenment! I don't know how you do that Jeffrey, but Thomas Jefferson hated organized religion, he used the word "priestcraft" (which was the Enlightenment scold word for Roman Catholicism), he was a deist at best, and he rewrote the Gospels in order to materialize them and threw out all of St. Paul's letters. The Declaration of Independence has nothing to do with Western Culture or Western Civilization.

The Protestant Scholar Philip Lee in his book, Against the Protestant Gnostics points out that almost all of American Protestantism IS Gnostic! And American Protestantism built this country. Kurt Vonnegut also points out that the Puritans that started America were Gnostic. Freemasonry is the carrier of Gnosticism. The motto of America, Novus Ordo Secularum, The New Order of the Ages, is about Progressivism; is about immanentizing the eschaton, which is Gnostic. Roman Catholicism, if it talks on the Natural Law, is about the Old Order! i.e. the Natural Order of things.

America is a "Hebrew republic". It was a Talmudic teaching that monarchy is idolatry that fueled the English Revolutions, Cromwell's coalition of Levellers. It was Scottish Presbyterianism that fueled the English revolutions. The American Revolution was a carryover of the English revolutions, which "The Great Revolution" was a part of. The first name of the American Revolution was called the Presbyterian Revolution.

No Catholic should base any of his arguments on anything to do with America or Americanism! America is a Novus Ordo, not attached to either true orthodox traditional Christianity or traditional Western Civilization. Catholics should reject anything that has to do with America and Americanism.

Yes, Man is made in the Image of God but that is the Universal. Scripture has it:

“And all men are from the ground, and Adam was created of earth. In much knowledge the Lord hath divided them, and made their ways diverse. Some of them hath he blessed and exalted, and some of them hath he sanctified, and set near himself: but some of them hath he cursed and brought low, and turned out of their places. As the clay is in the potter’s hand, to fashion it as his pleasure: so man is in the hand of him that made him, to render to them as liketh him best.” (LXX, Ecclesiasticus 36:10-13)

If He cursed some people, where is the dignity? So please explain to me this "dignity" which I consider to be Humanism, when God ordered the genociding of the Canaanite peoples by the Israelites. Please explain this "dignity of the human being" when God consigned whole populations to death? Where is this "dignity of the human being" in the Old Testament? Does God obey your dictates on dignity? Can someone explain that?

Why this is important, Jeffrey, is because of your own Statement, to wit: The problem, of course, remains that such expressions can indeed come at the expense of other groups – which is why I part ways with many on the alt-right in believing that the sin of racism is real and that racial hatred in indeed evil and wrong.

"The sin of racism"? That "racial hatred is indeed evil and wrong"? is all based on this "Dignity of the human being", which is humanism, the ideology of Globalism.

God created ALL the nations of the earth. That is the Old Order. As a Masonic Republic, America is the miniature Tower of Babel! based on the "dignity of Man". You have extrapolated "image" into dignity. That is not what Scripture teaches. Your ideology of "Dignity" here, as the "sin of racism" where Scripture and the Church, nor the Deposit of Faith teaches. "The sin of racism" is Marxism, Sir.

The only posts he's written where he is sympathetic to killing the immigrants are the ones urging the navies of Southern Europe to forcefully block the refugee ships. The rest has been pointing out that all of the bleeding heart fools who welcome these migrants for whatever reason will be the ones with blood on their hands when the ultra-nationalists decide to take back their countries by force. So unless you have seen something I haven't, your characterization is off.

For Heaven's sake, Wheeler, the Revolution is rooted in nearly 1000 years of British history on the relationship between political authorities and the public. The English-speaking world hasn't had an absolute monarch since several centuries before the Reformation and "Enlightenment."

(1) "For everyone else, it is as irrelevant as an issue as the Holodomor or Armenian Genocide." -- Well, sure, if you consider some of the worst and most horrific mass murders irrelevant to someone's understanding of history and the world?! I would hope you think that a well educated person from the West would learn about all three of these events in equal measure. I myself think Americans know too much about the Holocaust and too little about the crimes of Communism, including the Holodomor, but I would certainly want every kid in America who studies WWII to learn about Hitler's unique Jew-hatred and how it led to the Final Solution.

(2) "And I could probably point you to many conservatives who are more concerned about the possibility of whites becoming tribal than the actual anti-white tribal violence whites increasingly face in the West."

We do not do evil so that good may come of it. Which is why my original post suggested I reject most of what the alt-right represents. This is a non-sequitur, no matter how much I may agree with some of your criticism of these "conservatives."

(3) "The only posts he's written where he is sympathetic to killing the immigrants are the ones urging the navies of Southern Europe to forcefully block the refugee ships."

1. There is a world of difference between studying about these things and considering them relevant. The fact is that the Holocaust, Holodomor and Armenian Genocide have no relevance to US domestic or foreign affairs today. 9 times out of 10 that the Holocaust is brought up, it's usually to equate someone with Hitler and shut them down in an argument.

2. How is forming a tribal identity evil, let alone an evil on par with race hatred-fueled violence against random people? That is literally saying that being conscious of your own group, preferring it and defending it is on par with another group deliberately assaulting perfect strangers of another group of pure hatred.

3. I'd forgotten about that one, but so what? It's almost holy writ on the right that the US was justified in massacring almost 200k Japanese civilians, many of them children and all of them in their own country, minding their own business. As I said, blinders. The fact that one happened in a state of declared war and another in age of wildly unpopular mass migration does not make a world of difference. One is a socially approved murder, the other not.

1) Here's a question for you -- do you think anything about WWII or the wider history of communist brutality in the Soviet Union has any relevance to U.S. domestic or foreign affairs today?

2) The alt-right is about more than "forming a tribal identity."

3) More non-sequitur and avoidance of my point.

All of this is fine -- we can agree to disagree on a variety of topics. I think we have to be very careful in defending our people and our way of life, always keeping in mind Christian principles and ethics and never giving in to hate. When it comes to practical policy matters, I suspect there is much we could agree in -- crack down on illegal immigration; decrease legal immigration from Third World countries; end affirmative action; end federal education policies; etc.

1. When I say irrelevance, what I mean is that while they may have lead us to where we are today, there is not much more to them than that. Their relevance is simply is from the perspective of understanding history and how it brought us to this point. Beyond that, they are settled one way or another.

I would certainly want every kid in America who studies WWII to learn about Hitler's unique Jew-hatred and how it led to the Final Solution.

Hitler's hatred of the Jews was merely at the top of a long list of hatreds. Any accurate teaching of Nazi Germany's genocidal plans would have to include the fact that he hated the Gypsies almost as much and actually succeeded in slaughtering them even more than the Jews in the case of some Gypsie tribes. There is also the considerable fact that if the policy of Lebensraum had been successful, the Jews would have been a footnote in the list of Nazi crimes. All of the Slavic nations and probably Hungary, Romania and Greece would have been exterminated as well. The latter are debatable, but there is documentation that the Nazis planned to exterminate the Slavs as much as possible.

2. It's obviously not a single issue movement, but I doubt that's what you meant.

3. It's not a non-sequitor. Plenty of "decent people" can intellectually justify murder under the right circumstances. The abortion issue proves it even if the nuclear bombing does not. Murder is murder, be it in the form of slashing up students, nuclear bombing innocent civilians or chopping up the unborn. Which is why bringing up VD's blinders only proves that he has a similar issue shared with a significant swath of the population.

I think we have to be very careful in defending our people and our way of life, always keeping in mind Christian principles and ethics and never giving in to hate.

Some hate, most I've seen don't. The definition of "hate" has been so warped that most people don't realize that hatred really is fundamentally about wishing evil on others and trying to do it to them.

Hitler's hatred of the Jews was merely at the top of a long list of hatreds.

And the Holocaust is merely one item on the list of racial hatreds that led to genocidal levels of murder. Like Rwanda, Kosovo, Armenia, Ukraine, etc, we ought to deplore ALL of them, not say "so what?"

3. I'd forgotten about that one, but so what? It's almost holy writ on the right that the US was justified in massacring almost 200k Japanese civilians,

The correct response to one set of genocidal murders is not to excuse them with ANOTHER set of murders. This very blog WWWtW has brought up and talked about the evils implicit in the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, so you can't say that WE blindly excuse it. When you say it is "almost holy writ on the right" you are tarring with a VERY broad brush entire swaths of the right that DO NOT excuse it at all. Yes, for many years after WWII it was treated as justified, both on the left and the right, in large degree, but there were certainly portions of the right that did not do so. I keep running into conservatives who don't and didn't even in the 50s.

So, while the Holocaust should not hold any specially enshrined significance in American principles or policies over other atrocities or over more recent matters, nor should it be diminished into a "so what" of complete insignificance. It holds a due place as ONE atrocity of grave magnitude, some 70 years ago, by a regime we did not formally support and eventually wiped out.

How is forming a tribal identity evil, let alone an evil on par with race hatred-fueled violence against random people?

It's not the violence against "random people" that is at issue. It's the violence against "people that don't look like me and mine, don't sound like us, and are not from around here", that is the issue. That's not random, it is racially generated violence. And, if it is not justified by actions in the concrete of these specific individuals, it is based on racial hatred. The link Jeff gave about Lundin-Petterson clearly indicates discrimination between those that looked like the home team and those that looked foreign. And, since there was no other criteria for these school kids (like, willful harmful actions these kids engaged in), the motivation for the violence used was simply racial hatred. And diatribes promoting this stuff is pretty common in the alt-right, not isolated "far out" wing-nuts mocked by the rest of the alt-right.

Since Reagan and the 80s, lots of people like to call themselves "conservative" who haven't a clue what conservatism really is, and before Reagan never imagined themselves to be "conservative" at all. Neo-conservatives (sic), for the most part, are rightward-leaning liberals. Finding that "many conservatives" fit the nonsense like you claim in this quote

“The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected."

only shows that there are large swaths of people wrongly imagining that certain groups are conservatives. The media has spend 35 years wrongly using the term for every Tom, Dick, and Mark Warner of the Republican Party as if "conservative" and "Republican" were interchangeable, it's no wonder that many people mix up who is what.

It is true that some conservatives have lost their way, and no longer espouse common sense truth. So also is it with Christianity: some formerly good Christians have lost their way, and no longer espouse the Gospel properly. Should we denounce the Gospel because some "Christians" mis-speak it? Heaven forbid. Conservatism as such as not proven false because some falsely prophecy in its name.

I don't know anything about Gnostic statements but is it not really so that here "equal" refers to political equality and a denial of aristocratic privilege and hierarchical European society and does not refer to the Christian doctrine at all?

All nations, not only America are "proposition" nations. The nation is not merely defined by race or descent, as alt-right imagines but by a way of life. Thus, America is defined by American Way, Germany by the German Way, Hindus by the Hindu Way.

I appreciate Wheeler's point that the idea "monarchy is idolatry that fueled the English Revolutions". I don't know about Talmudic but the idea of the evil of monarchy could be had through a Protestant reading of the Old Testament.Thus, I am doubtful that the American Revolution is rooted in 1000 year evolution of English politics.
The Protestant Takeover marks a sharp break in the evolution of Catholic England and directly led to the English Revolutions.

The correct response to one set of genocidal murders is not to excuse them with ANOTHER set of murders.

I excused nothing. I demonstrated that it is a common blinder because somewhere, somehow most people will dehumanize someone for some reason. It is a sign that they are wrong, not formally evil.

If you are right (and I'm skeptical) then this is all the more reason to be careful with our arguments/rhetoric and not give people the wrong ideas about human life and human dignity.

How can I be wrong about this on a blog where everyone claims to believe abortion is murder, and we see that the majority of Americans support abortion under some circumstances? The very fact that so many even in the church can say something like "it's between her and God" on the issue demonstrates my point that even otherwise decent people can be blind to the specific moral nature of some forms of homicide. Again, it doesn't make them evil people, but it proves the point that every time you (editorial you) go "aha!!" at someone for this issue, it can usually be turned against you or someone you respect.

It's not the violence against "random people" that is at issue. It's the violence against "people that don't look like me and mine, don't sound like us, and are not from around here", that is the issue. That's not random, it is racially generated violence. And, if it is not justified by actions in the concrete of these specific individuals, it is based on racial hatred. The link Jeff gave about Lundin-Petterson clearly indicates discrimination between those that looked like the home team and those that looked foreign. And, since there was no other criteria for these school kids (like, willful harmful actions these kids engaged in), the motivation for the violence used was simply racial hatred. And diatribes promoting this stuff is pretty common in the alt-right, not isolated "far out" wing-nuts mocked by the rest of the alt-right.

It actually is the violence against random people that is the original issue. Having read a number of criticism of the Alt Right everywhere from Marginal Revolution, to PjMedia, to other outlets, I've always seen it come back to the fear that whites might be starting to play identity politics and if whites become a self aware tribe within the multicultural mess we have it may all come crashing down. As I said, one even lamented that whites might throw off Affirmative Action out of a desire to protect their own. Imagine that!

The Lundin-Petterson outrage is nothing more than a distraction. Granted, it is a case of evil and I made that clear, but it is a distraction. It's on par with with making the monster of the moment a father who slips RU486 to his pregnant significant other while doing nothing more than tut tutting all of the women who do it every year on their own accord.

What do you think these people want? Some neo-Fascist totalitarian state with second class citizenship for well-integrated minorities? Some of the biggest names do a lot of the nasty things they do to the left specifically to defend Freedom of Speech by terrorizing the SJWs into leaving ordinary people alone instead of living in fear of rage mobs, doxxing, disemployment, etc.

Read the last part of that post about immigration. It's an indication that you also missed a good chunk of the context.

All nations, not only America are "proposition" nations. The nation is not merely defined by race or descent, as alt-right imagines but by a way of life. Thus, America is defined by American Way, Germany by the German Way, Hindus by the Hindu Way.

That's not what "proposition nation" means. It refers to the rejection of the idea ethnicity is more than a set of principles and ideas. According to it, there can be no organic American nation because anyone can be American by claiming to hold the same values as our founders are alleged to have held. That is not to preclude the possibility of foreigners truly integrating. Rather, it is the case that the "proposition nation" means that you may be born, raised and live your entire life in the US and be no more or less part of the American nation or ethnos than some foreigner who claims to hold "American values" as far as they understand them. It is, therefore, entirely unlike what you are asserting. It is an assertion that not only do race and descent not matter, but that one can be literally whatever they want to be and still American so long as they hold to whatever we maintain the "American proposition" currently is. Since that proposition is not actually set in stone, well, it effectively means that American is both everything and nothing.

Let me make it clear that I don't support what Lundin-Petterson did. I just can't get worked up about it when I see the reverse demographic case happening on a regular basis and people worried "what will white people do if they suddenly realize it's all one sided." If Vox Day actually does support him, I think that's wrong. However, I will not denounce him for probably similar reasons that Matt Walsh will not be denounced on this blog for his views on women's culpability with respect to abortion. (You will not doubt be shocked to find that I am in almost complete agreement with Zippy on such arguments). I would also not expect such denunciation for the simple fact that denouncing people for the occasional Badthink is something that is very dangerous and almost always wrong.

I don't know anything about Gnostic statements but is it not really so that here "equal" refers to political equality and a denial of aristocratic privilege and hierarchical European society and does not refer to the Christian doctrine at all?

the idea "monarchy is idolatry that fueled the English Revolutions"

Wheeler's comments are bunk. It is almost impossible to state all the ways in which he is wrong.

In the right sense, the "equality" is not primarily one of political equality that denies either aristocratic or monarchic forms of government. It is a metaphysical kind of equality of man in relation to God: all men are creatures utterly dependent on God creating and sustaining them. All men hold in equal measure the nature of man: social, rational animal. All men are ordered to Good in the same fundamental way: to know and to love the Universal Good as such. Every man is a person, an unrepeatable good who is not to be used as an instrument but loved as a thing worthy of love in himself. It is because of these truths of sameness, that all men hold a _kind_ of equality with respect to the political realm: all men are ordered to "the good" of the political order as sharers in the common good (not mere instruments thereto); and antecedent to society having formed a specific political order, no man is by nature a ruler over other men.

However, neither aristocracy nor monarchy as political orders are contrary to these principles. It is perfectly possible to have an aristocracy that conforms itself to the universal, fundamental equality of all men, in which the aristocratic rulers rule the society for the common good so that all men are sharers in it. Taken from proper principle, "all men are made equal" is not antithetical to aristocracy.

It is funny that Wheeler ties Protestantism to the notion "monarchy is idolatry". Certainly nothing in the notions of the European monarchs who first forced their Catholic populations to abandon Catholicism and shoved them into Protestantism was driven by a motivation like "monarchy is idolatry". Certainly Sir Robert Filmer's very Protestant "Patriarcha" was utterly incompatible with "monarchy is idolatry".

Jeffrey S. fails to understand that while all men are called to communion with God in His Church, doesn't stop anybody from being a slave, an aristocrat, or a Monarch, or a commoner. Jeffrey doesn't make a distinction, nor does the CC between the ideology of Christian theology and the Natural Order. As Aristotle said, "some men are natural slaves". That can't be dismissed.

One doesn't have to "dismiss" Aristotle in order to know he was wrong in this particular conclusion. And Wheeler is completely out to lunch in suggesting that Catholicism, (including that found in medieval times) is compatible with any "natural slave" theory. A slave in this sense is someone who is naturally designed to serve the good of the master, not his own good. Christianity never taught such a thing. All men, in virtue of being by nature social, are designed to serve the *common good*, but as sharers in that common good, as participants of the polity, not as mere instruments of it. All men are persons, and as such cannot be instruments per se of the good of others. This is fundamental to Christian doctrine, and can be seen in medieval theology (such as that of St. Thomas).

The founders allowed slavery and oversaw an electoral system that only allowed a fairly large minority of free, adult white men to vote. They made absolutely no moves after the war to change that. So I'd say that the founders would not be inclined toward equalitarianism.

Another thing, they also enacted a naturalization law that specifically excluded non-whites from naturalization. That's certainly one of the more interesting points I've seen Alt-Right posters bring up on sites like PjMedia when the "mainstream conservatives" insist that "white nationalism" is some racist innovation rather than a concept that goes back to literally the founding of the country. The founders could not have been clearer: they never intended the rights of citizenship to be open to say, Somali Muslims.

Right -- and I think it goes without saying that the principles of the Declaration of Independence, not to mention the Christian ethics of many of the Founders, were in tension with this fact. It just took about seventy years and a nasty civil war before we figured out how to resolve that tension.

2) "Another thing, they also enacted a naturalization law that specifically excluded non-whites from naturalization."

Quite right -- and Ben Franklin wrote some great stuff early in his career about assimilation and German immigration. Think about the recent madman in Orlando -- if reports are to be believed, during one of his calls to 911 he said something to the effect of "I'm doing this because you are bombing my country" -- his country being his ancestral homeland Afghanistan. Clearly, some immigrants do better at assimilating than others -- and the United States used to do a better job at assimilating various immigrant groups.

Clearly, some immigrants do better at assimilating than others -- and the United States used to do a better job at assimilating various immigrant groups.

People tend to forget that part of the reason immigrants assimilated pretty well (completely is not really true) was that the prevailing Anglo-Saxon culture was, by today's standards, brutally intolerant of immigrants that wouldn't assimilate. Open and "vicious" discrimination was not only practiced but very widespread. The government also did not hesitate to round up and deport trouble-making immigrants (ex. early predominantly Italian and Jewish Communists and Anarchists). It also did not hesitate to consider options ranging from mass surveillance to internment in a time of war for bodies of immigrants insufficiently enthusiastic about their new loyalty (or like the Japanese, just different) and willingness to fight the Old Country.

Modern Christians would and frequently do when it's brought up, denounce all of that. That raises two interesting possibilities: either our forebears were lesser Christians than us in very serious ways (unlikely, given the state our culture is in today) or modern beliefs about immigration are almost completely wrong. I tend to lean toward the latter.

It just took about seventy years and a nasty civil war before we figured out how to resolve that tension.

That's the rosy lensed view of our history. The issue didn't even start to get truly resolved until the 1950s, and even today, most of the "anti-racism" is quite openly built on a double standard that eschews color blindness.

Had our founders lived and governed into the 1860s it is more probable that the issue would have never been resolved.

"part of the reason immigrants assimilated pretty well (completely is not really true)"

Yes, the question of completely was what my original post tried to address -- can an Italian completely assimilate into a predominately Anglo-Saxon culture? Again, I say yes in smaller numbers -- probably no in the large numbers that did wind up coming to the U.S. Which is why they helped transform American culture as opposed to completely assimilating into our traditional American way of life. Some of this transformation was benign (think pizza) and some not so much (think big city machine politics or the mafia.)

I'm almost tempted to update my post with this link, it is so good and directly relevant to exactly the issues I deal with; but for now I'll just share a piece of it with everyone and encourage you all to read the whole thing:

Last fall, Abdul said “Can you believe Trump wants to kick out all Muslims?”

“Pretty sure he wants to ban Muslim immigration.”

“Same thing.”

“Well, no. Even assuming the ban happened, it wouldn’t be for citizens and you’re a citizen, right?”

Abdul spat. “I’m not a citizen of this country. Not if they nominate Trump.”

“Oh, that’s such crap.”

“I’m Palestinian. I can go there after I get my degree.”

“Yeah, because Palestine is just a paradise of tolerance and religious freedom.”

Abdul was shocked at my, er, lack of support for his pain. “You think I should just accept people here hating Muslims and electing Trump?”

“Jesus, Abdul. You want to oppose Trump? Start a voter registration drive. Put a sign in your yard. Go door to door. But oppose him as an American.”

“But why would I want to be an American if Republicans hate Muslims? ”

“Republicans don’t hate Muslims. Trump doesn’t even hate Muslims. And America didn’t demand you lived up to any expectations, didn’t make any demands of you to give you citizenship.”

“Wow, go ED!” shouted Al, who demands we pledge every day even if there’s no announcements because “otherwise the Commies win!” “And go TRUMP!”

“Shush. Look, Abdul, you should oppose Trump. You’ll have plenty of company. But you are a shining example of what Islam can mean in America–you work hard, you challenge yourself, you’ve achieved tremendously. But you reject the country that gave your parents a home–well, no, not rejecting it, but making it conditional.”

“It’s conditional on people accepting my religion!”

“They do, but never mind that. If you reject the country of your birth in favor of Islam, you who have done so much and so well, isn’t it logical for Americans–actual Americans, those who don’t set conditions on their country–to wonder if Muslims are right for this country? Shouldn’t we wonder if they’ll be loyal, if they’ll appreciate what the country has to offer? If you make your acceptance conditional, how can you blame the America you want to reject for doing the same?”

Abdul mulled, shifting his shoulders back and forth. “That’s a bunch of good points.”

“Well, we shouldn’t be talking about politics in class. Back to trig.”

Hate, or hatred, has been mentioned in this thread. In the social context of the Anglosphere, 2016, is this "hate" a useful word? Does it contribute to understanding? Does it illuminate anything worth illuminating? Does it do much of anything other than to intimidate persons who would otherwise wish to speak for Western civilization?

I do not ask whether the word possesses a proper definition, but rather whether the chief effect of the word's use in the present context is not to cause the various foes of liberalism -- like the Imperial legions of Diocletian's youth, turning backs to the barbarians -- to rend one another.

To what degree do we implicitly accept the Left's premises by adopting words they have put in our mouths?

Personally, I don't think that the project of purifying the Right is remotely worth it. Let the Left fight its own battles. I will not help by hunting down and rooting out the "haters," Hitlers and homophobes among the Left's various foes.

Personally, I don't think that the project of purifying the Right is remotely worth it.

And what does it gain us to purge? Do mainstream conservatives honestly think that the Alt-Right, which often speaks in more radical terms about social issues, is going to stab them in the back electorally if they pursue their stated agenda forthrightly? As Vox Day repeatedly observes, "conservatives have conserved nothing" in the grand scheme of things. So if some conservatives got serious and tried, do you think you're better or worse off having more supporters especially supporters willing to fight the uglier fights so you don't have to?

BTW, Jeff, I recommend Mike Cernovich's post on harassment and anti-Semitism as a response to some of these issues.

"In the social context of the Anglosphere, 2016, is this "hate" a useful word? Does it contribute to understanding?"

Yes, which is why I used it. In other cases, crazy leftists use the word inappropriately and we should call them out for doing so. I'm a big fan of Confucius in this situation:

A superior man, in regard to what he does not know, shows a cautious reserve. If names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things. If language be not in accordance with the truth of things, affairs cannot be carried on to success. When affairs cannot be carried on to success, proprieties and music do not flourish. When proprieties and music do not flourish, punishments will not be properly awarded. When punishments are not properly awarded, the people do not know how to move hand or foot. Therefore a superior man considers it necessary that the names he uses may be spoken appropriately, and also that what he speaks may be carried out appropriately. What the superior man requires is just that in his words there may be nothing incorrect.

"Personally, I don't think that the project of purifying the Right is remotely worth it."

First of all, I'm in no position to be "purifying the Right" of anyone. Nevertheless, when folks who claim to be allies of the conservative movement and/or want to get in the trenches with me and fight against the Left, I think it makes sense to ask whether or not they are really friend or foe (or just plain crazy.) Thinking back to the most famous purge in the conservative movement of the John Birch Society, Russell Kirk and William Buckley simply decided that the Birchers were crazy and they didn't want to be associated with crazy people -- a sensible position in my opinion for a variety of reasons.

Mike T,

"As Vox Day repeatedly observes, "conservatives have conserved nothing" in the grand scheme of things."

This phrase gets bandied about quite a bit on the alt-right, but I can never figure out quite what they mean. When you say "grand scheme of things" do you mean in relationship to the monarchies of Old Europe? With respect to the size of government versus pre-New Deal America (quite a bit of truth to that statement -- but hard to blame modern conservatives for this problem when we have in fact made some small progress in rolling back the regulatory state and reducing the tax burden on Americans?) Or with respect to social mores over the past 50 years (where again you might have a stronger case, although here you would have to at least discuss the role of the courts in our political life, how this role has changed, and how conservatives have been trying to fight back against this new political role?) Just what does is this statement supposed to mean?

To what degree do we implicitly accept the Left's premises by adopting words they have put in our mouths?

The word, and concept, of "hatred" long precedes the modern left. Christ used it to tell us how to think and behave. We ought to love as God loves, and hate as God hates. There is nothing inappropriate in calling out hatred that is opposed to Godliness.

Personally, I don't think that the project of purifying the Right is remotely worth it.

The point is not to "purify the Right" but to purify people. It can never hurt to help someone become more like to God.

Part of the role of the Church is to call sinners to amend themselves and start to become holy, but another role is to help those close holiness to purify themselves of their last remaining imperfections so that they become saints. It isn't wrong to address the latter just because there are plenty of the former. Nor is the amendment of the mind less to be desired than the amendment of the will. If it were true that some in the "Right" were politically correct about many things, but in error about a few, it would be good to teach them better about their few errors even if there are many more who need far more correction. To make better isn't restricted to the worst of all.

As Vox Day repeatedly observes, "conservatives have conserved nothing" in the grand scheme of things.

Sometimes the forces for right are in growth, sometimes diminishing. The Irish monks of the early medieval period conserved much for the sake - centuries later - of the Church. God's time scale is a bit longer than a few election cycles. The Hebrews put up with a few hundred years of persecution by the Egyptians before God took a hand to fix it. Indeed, God's promise to Adam and Eve to send a Redeemer was made thousands of years before it was fulfilled and "success" achieved. Jesus's promise to come again and "make all things new" has waited 2000 years, and counting. You can't decide that those working for the good have "failed" if you can't see success within a few decades.

But were the Founders intending to make a statement against aristocracy and for political equality of man or not?

Or they were only repeating the Catholic doctrine?.

Bedarz, perhaps we should refer to you as "Bedarz the bed bug". You can bite, but you don't seem to have any other purpose here.

In the Declaration, these phrases were not there to justify overturning aristocracy, as any decent reading of the text readily shows. They are there to justify separating from a government that persisted in using the colonies for the mother country's sole benefit, treating them not as participants in the common good of the whole, but as instruments of the betterment of others. The entire basis for the claims in the Declaration is that the said government had dealt unjustly with the colonies, NOT that said government was unjustly formed because it was an aristocracy. There was considerable debate, after the Declaration and when the war was ending, as to what form of government would be formed, and at the time a monarchy or aristocracy was not utterly out of the question.

In this context, "political equality" was the equality of colonials with other British subjects. Other British subjects were subject to aristocracy, and the colonies were not objecting to THAT. They were objecting to not being treated as British subjects with the rights of such.

It is, of course, silly to ask whether they might have been "repeating Catholic doctrine". But what is not silly is that many Catholics in America at the time were well supportive of the Revolution because they recognized and affirmed that there is at least some appropriate sense in these phrases, if taken as rooted in God's creation of man and His grant of man's rule over himself, as it says in Eccelesiasticus 15:14, "He himself made man from the beginning, and left him in the hand of his counsel". That there is another sense in which these phrases can be taken, a sense that does violence to man's political nature as formed by God, does not refute that they have an acceptable sense.

Your three answers to my comment are each better than my comment. The concurrence is appreciated. The correction is accepted. The illumination is noted. Thanks.

So, if you choose, maybe you can help me to say right what I said wrong. I hate the tyranny of postmodern antiracism. The mildest dissent from antiracist orthodoxy, the least bit of frustration with the perceived failings of persons of other colors, the slightest misstatement, error or unproved conjecture in ethnic matters, is met by the most ferocious, career-destroying response, that, just instinctively, whenever I hear the accusation that some white guy is a hateful racist, I reflexively want to cheer for the accused. And if the accused turns out to be unpleasant, after all, I'll seldom lift a finger against him even then, because I would not willingly throw my weight into the already, grotesquely overloaded Leftward pan of the general social balance—and because (to borrow Barry Farber's phrase) the Romantic in me deigns not to choose cowardly things to be courageous about.

The thing I don't like about the alt-right is its crude language and crude sentiments (also, I judge its anti-Semitism to be imprudent and misguided). My reservations regarding neoreaction lie in its excessively speculative nature. However, I regard the alt-right and neoreaction as fellow travelers and probable young allies. Both weigh heartily in the aforementioned balance's lonely Rightward pan.

Something has gone badly amiss. Apparently, I am asking the wrong question. What is the right question, please?

I should say the right question is how can we do justly, love mercy and truth, and walk humbly with God.

And I would say, inter alia, that means we do not adopt a "no enemies to the right" policy. Darkness and evil can emerge with any political label they please, and never so dangerous (to our own souls) as when they pretend to be our allies.

Or with respect to social mores over the past 50 years (where again you might have a stronger case, although here you would have to at least discuss the role of the courts in our political life, how this role has changed, and how conservatives have been trying to fight back against this new political role?) Just what does is this statement supposed to mean?

This election has brought out a lot of the absurdity. Consider the female draft issue. Conservatives cannot even say forthrightly that the reason women have no place being drafted is that women have no place in the armed forces because that is opposed to the natural order that God established. The best that came out was Cruz making tepid arguments that still refused to address the real reason rather than ensuring that no one would have to reconsider their gender egalitarianism (ie androgynous fungibility). Then the abortion thing really kicked it into high gear with conservatives falling all over themselves to prove to the left that they would never support something as horrible as punishing a woman who seeks one for homicide. As one commenter on Zippy's blog cited, a significant minority of abortions are now self-administered which effectively means that the so-called pro-life movement believes that a woman who takes a pill of her own free will to end her child's life should not be liable for prosecution. (There is also the fact that mens rea is formed by intending to break a law while being mentally competent, and has nothing to do with one's subjective views on the law or the things it covers.) On social issues, stick a fork in the mainstream right. It's completely failed. We could cite examples all day and not exhaust the ways it's failed to stop the advance of the left.

It is important to remember that at no point did God ordain Christians as the world's police and general solvers of conflict. You are not obligated to police the thoughts and beliefs of others. You are not obligated to ever say that a rage mob or SJW that went after an alleged bigot might have had some point about something regarding their target unless--perhaps---the person is guilty of some truly wicked stuff. Nazi prison camp guard finally caught? Maybe. Garden variety bigot who is not guilty of actual crimes (just BadThink)? They're just a sinner and the ordinary obligates apply to them same as anyone else. Furthermore, even if they are the basest bigot they can be, until they actually harm someone, all the actions you describe are persecuting someone for the inner state of their heart and mind. They have no right to do that.

Minor digression, but since Lydia wants to defend Shapiro I'd like to bring this statement of his up again:

"Of course there are legitimate racists and we should target them, We should find them and we should hurt their careers because racism is unacceptable."

And then he turns around and complains when people find his views unacceptable, target him and hurt his career. Oh, his views are ok. So the tactics he gleefully uses on his enemies are ok, but don't you dare retaliate and use them on him!

Back to the bigger issue. Should you as a Christian participate in a rage mob, systematically harass and engage in other such bad behaviors? No. Just because you shouldn't do that doesn't mean you have to disavow the company, in terms of political activity, of people who do because even where behavior is evil there are varying degrees of evil. A troll is typically not even remotely on the same plane as a murderer for instance and confusing that muddles more than clarifies.

I can't remember who said it (think it was Glenn Reynolds or Robert McCain) who said that the problem with the right is that they don't realize that when the barbarians are inside the gates, you are a fool if you care if the man fighting next to you is ordinarily a cut throat rather than decent man. The specific political issue of not being sacked, raped and massacred takes priority. That is why a number of conservatives are starting to realize that they don't have to approve of the Alt-Right because as long as they don't attack the Alt-Right, the Alt-Right is more than content to leave them alone and chase after the SJW barbarians. You don't have to morally approve of the people fighting on your side and you are not personally guilty for their conduct anymore than you are under other circumstances. If Milo Yiannopoulos were to literally throw off the stage to certain critical injury the next BLM agitator who hijacks his stage, I am under no obligation to rebuke him for not turning the other cheek. My obligation is to take the harder route that Lydia described.

Another issue that is a big one is exemplified in the reaction to Vox Day's points about retaliation using the WWI nerve gas issue as an example. A lot of conservatives I've seen respond to that find it upsetting that he would defend retaliation in war by using such means. In reality, it is just an example of the modern habit of confusing niceness and goodness. What is wrong about our side hitting the Germans heavily with nerve gas to drive home the point "stop using that #$%^ on our troops?" It's ugly and so is retaliation, but neither are intrinsically immoral in the proper context. Hitting enemy troops with nerve gas is absolutely no more immoral than hitting them with cluster munitions from a B-52 or hitting them with artillery.

There is a tension on the right about speech policing, deplatforming, disemployment, etc. We recognize that those things can be defensible and even good when used on the right targets. The SJWs use them indiscriminately and with no real thought of justice, which is the root of much of the problem. So what is scary to the left and uncomfortable to mainstream conservatives, is that the Alt-Right says fine, you want to do that? We'll beat your head into the ground with it until you stop doing it. And interestingly, such simple examples as the "SJW list" have driven them into fits of hysteria. The retaliation, if you will, is not even at a level of parity in most cases. The mere act of escalating the level of response to something other than "strongly written blog post, primarily utilizing dialectic" has scared them into the belief that maybe these guys aren't going to just stand there and be punching bags.

It doesn't seem all that long ago but I was there at, or near, the beginning of Moldbug's blogging career. At the time he struck me as a little bit quirky and a whole lot utopian, but nothing he wrote seems remotely sympathetic to the alt-right. There is no nation under his governance system, it is a bunch of loosely connected corporate-city-states each under the absolute control* of its owner/ruler. After he started his own blog, Mencius later explains the owner/ruler has fine-tuned control over firearms within his territory through smartgun technology. How his formal governance system can be considered an inspiration for white nationalist gun hoarders is a total mystery.

*Mencius did try to formulate a system of counterbalance through a secretive corporate styled board of governors which was completely unworkable.

One point of clarification -- when you say, "a significant minority of abortions are now self-administered" do you mean the abortifacient is available over the counter without a prescription? This is a question from someone who just wants to know and is asking out loud so more informed voices can speak up and/or I don't have to do the serious Google research at the moment.

What I said, Mike, is that you are ignorant and spouting B.S. for saying that nobody hates Shapiro for being a Jew. And I stand by that.

Lydia, do you really think I am arguing that literally not one person on God's green Earth hates him for being a Jew? Don't be ridiculous. You can probably find some anti-semite who hates him simply for being a Jew. They'd just be insignificant compared to the number of people who despise him for his behavior.

I would guess because they're antisemites, as evidenced by their resorting to an irrelevant insult.

It's nothing more than an ad hominem slur, based on the premise that only a combat veteran is entitled to support fighting in a particular instance. But do those who use the term really mean that? For instance, do they actually believe that only police and firemen have a right to voice opinions on law enforcement and firefighting? No. They use "chickenhawk" to demean supporters of a given military action that they themselves are against.

One point of clarification -- when you say, "a significant minority of abortions are now self-administered" do you mean the abortifacient is available over the counter without a prescription?

It means that the decades-old pussyfooting by conservatives and liberals alike over the criminal liability* of women for abortions using the 'direct actor' excuse is failing: the women is the direct actor in the killing in 20% of abortions in the US (with this number continually rising; it's 50% in France) by being the one who actively ingests the pills.

And the completely unsurprising** response will be 'but it's not a prescription drug!', which hardly detracts from this argument : why should someone who knowingly providdes another a weapon for him to commit his premeditated killing possess all the legal guilt?

*This argument is not advocating some boneheaded strawman that 'the legal system should ensure every women who has an abortion receives punishment' but that every women who consensually has an abortion should be liable for punishment, with all the normal legal mechanisms at the prosecutor, jury, and judge levels to reach appropriate charges and punishments at the end (if any), taking into account the usual factors of the availability of evidence, degree of coercion if any, and so forth.

**completely unsurprising because the mainstream position by both conservatives and liberals is to make anyone but the mothers scapegoats for their legal guilt

It's nothing more than an ad hominem slur, based on the premise that only a combat veteran is entitled to support fighting in a particular instance. But do those who use the term really mean that? For instance, do they actually believe that only police and firemen have a right to voice opinions on law enforcement and firefighting? No. They use "chickenhawk" to demean supporters of a given military action that they themselves are against.

Rather, in his case he was a particularly strong supporter of the conflicts, often making it sound like you are less of an American if you didn't support our being there. Yet for a man so dedicated to those conflicts, he never once decided it necessary to put his (completely unnecessary) law career on hold to join up (we need more lawyers like we need more prostitutes these days).

Somehow I don't think that if a speaker took to your church's pulpit regularly to sermonize on the absolutely necessity of performing charitable acts and was conspicuously absent from any charitable activities, you'd object to people calling him out as a hypocrite.

Anyone who uses it is arguing like a vindictive idiot.

Rhetoric is not only a legitimate tool in an argument, there is a large minority of the population that can't even be reached by reason. If you disagree, then go try to convert a typical Sanders supporter to Christianity and into supporting Austrian School Capitalism.

"Rather, in his case he was a particularly strong supporter of the conflicts, often making it sound like you are less of an American if you didn't support our being there."

Then Shapiro was reprehensible in doing so. Nevertheless, two wrongs, one right, and so forth.

"Somehow I don't think that if a speaker took to your church's pulpit regularly to sermonize on the absolutely necessity of performing charitable acts and was conspicuously absent from any charitable activities, you'd object to people calling him out as a hypocrite."

So you indeed do maintain that only combat veterans are entitled to advocate military action?

"Rhetoric is not only a legitimate tool in an argument, there is a large minority of the population that can't even be reached by reason."

Oh. Well as long as the ad hominem is rhetoric, then it's okay. My bad.

Do you really believe that employing logical fallacies to convince people will serve any useful purpose?

Yeah, that's it: The continual deluge of anti-semitic slurs being heaped upon Ben Shapiro day after day are just "rhetoric." That or they are somehow his fault. Or they don't count, or something. Or he's making them up.

Your comments at 8:48 AM this morning are a model of common sense and wisdom -- I just wanted to thank you for them.

In one of my comments I mentioned an alt-right website I used to frequent where I experienced antisemitism first hand. I'm not going to mention the website (they are famous in alt-right circles) but I did find the post and comment thread -- I had attempted to defend some of the ideas of the neoconservatives (something I consider myself an expert on) and here is are a couple of verbatim responses I got:

"Jews lied, and people ALWAYS die. Go back to the bowels of Satan, from whence thee came, Jew."

and

"You do realize you are whining about "Anti Semitism being tired" on the Comment thread of an article detailing the evils of Jewry, don't you?
There's an oven that's missing you."

These people are indeed nasty, crazy and in some cases full of hate. Christian conservatives do not want to be fighting with them if we can avoid it.

Oh. Well as long as the ad hominem is rhetoric, then it's okay. My bad.

Calling you a name is not an ad hominem.

Yeah, that's it: The continual deluge of anti-semitic slurs being heaped upon Ben Shapiro day after day are just "rhetoric." That or they are somehow his fault. Or they don't count, or something. Or he's making them up.

Or it's just trolling. Real trolling, not the sort of thing where someone says "his comment made me made, that makes him a troll."

Wake me when instead of saying Really Mean Things, he can't give a public presentation (like Mike Cernovich) without trolls calling a SWAT team on him.

Thank you in return, you and the other hosts - for this website, and your excellent posts.

Further to my earlier communication to you, I had hoped that you would email me at least the cut and pasted full argument that you presented there. Of course I'd like to know the identity of the site, and to see the whole post and comment thread too. But if you're not comfortable with providing anything, then of course I respect your wishes, and apologize for asking. If you change your mind, you have my address.

Maybe my perspective on America and her Christians would be of interest:

Or it's just trolling. Real trolling, not the sort of thing where someone says "his comment made me made, that makes him a troll."

Blah, blah. Mike T., the Energizer Bunny of "making up new, down-playing names for vicious behavior on the part of people he wishes to have as allies." Which always, somehow, means that none of it is relevant to anything any conservative should ever want to be talking about. Because no enemies to the right. Lalalala, I can't hear you, it doesn't matter, it's just __________________ (fill in down-playing term or phrase).

Y'know, Mike, that really makes me positively sick. It's a sad comment on what has happened *to you* that you do this. In fact, you seem *committed* to doing it. It's your thing. It's very important to you. You do it constantly, world without end. You're always determined to have the last word making excuses for the despicable behavior of your alt-right-ish fellow travelers.

It shows just one reason why we *should* be saying that the alt-right is despicable and steering ourselves and others away from them, making no such excuses: Because there are people like you out there who want to be their fellow-travelers and defenders. Because *just maybe* we can prevent some people who haven't yet been corrupted, as you have, into defending them on and on and on, as you do, from being corrupted, as you have been.

"And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them." Ephesians 5:11

I just don't care. The man is a provocateur and pundit. That is what he does for a living and he is shocked that having gone hunting in Troll Lands he has unleashed something he isn't prepared to handle. I also take into account his treatment of his former coworkers and employer (Breitbart) over the Fields/Trump thing. The man has been absolute ass in how he treated them. To this day, even after Fields was forced to back down because the evidence was so weak the DA couldn't bring the charges she finally brought after enough "put up or shut up" he still will not apologize for launching some truly nasty invective at his former colleagues--mainly for the "sin" of remaining neutral as journalists.

It is incredible to me that we are taking sides over a grown man who went looking for a fight, picked it several times and is now crying over getting beaten up. It's a lesson that most of men learn by the time they graduate high school. For a man who advocates that we hunt down, harass, disemploy and deplatform people simply for the content of their hearts and minds, not concrete actions, he is sure quick to complain when his potential targets don't wait for him and come after him.

What's next? Declare your intent to hunt down and kill ISIS supporters on the international media and act shocked when someone in Raqqa notices you and sends a fighter after you? Actions have consequences. If you're going to be provocative on social media, pick fights and worse, declare your intent to start real fights, then you'd better be prepared to step up.

This reminds me a lot of GamerGate. When the thing hit the MSM, "respectable people" swooped in to shriek about how toxic gaming culture was, declare gamers dead, etc. Misogyny was declare epidemic, feminists (Sarkeesian, Wu and others) were fleeing for their lives. Then when the dust settled it was found that most of the "threats" were from the notorious GNAA and similar trolls, the FBI investigated a few of the threats and found them laughably baseless and in the end it came down to hurt feelings.

Then you have the fact that you can almost instantly dismiss any outrageous act of hate allegedly targeting minorities today as a hoax and be proved right within a few months. Literally almost not a single one in the last decade or more has turned out to be true; it's all a false flag by the left against its enemies.

So when I hear that trolls are trolling Shapiro, I yawn. History has repeated itself enough that it's not even farce, let alone Disney straight to DVD comedy anymore. It's just old. So again, wake me up when Shapiro is doing a podcast and an anti-semite SWATs him and nearly gets him put in grave danger. (Or maybe like when Roosh was staying with his dad and several liberals tried to come in masquerading as repairmen to possibly violently assault his family). Until then, it's hurt feelings.

And I don't even blame the Alt-Right for a lot of his complaints because of his own behavior and the fact that it's been reliably shown by past experience that most shocking breaches of decorum are done by trolls.

Rrright. So if it's "trolls" it doesn't count. If nobody actually physically attacks the guy, it doesn't count. If you can find a way in your own twisted illogic to blame the recipient of vileness for receiving it, it doesn't count.

Not only doesn't count, but doesn't matter. Isn't worth mentioning. Isn't something to trouble one's head about associating oneself with via one's friends and allies.

I suppose it's also Erick Erickson's fault that he has to have bodyguards sit in his front driveway because of the threats he's getting. Oh, but I shouldn't have said that. Now I will have to see your pixels talking about how it _is_ Erickson's fault, how he brought it upon himself, and how anyway, nobody's _actually_ attacked his family yet, so it isn't worth bringing up and he's overreacting and whining, blah, blah, blah. But please, please, spare us. We can take your excuse-making crap as read. (Yes, I don't usually swear on blogs even that far, but I am so sick of your crap that I'm calling it what it is for once.)

You are corrupted, Mike T. You fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness and then try to bore us to death and waste our bandwidth because we take the trouble to reprove them. You will make excuses for any evil on the self-described right, perhaps short of *actually* physically attacking someone. You yourself say you don't care. Well, that shows that you have a problem. Vileness is something you should care about, especially in connection with the people whom you are telling everyone to "leave alone," not to speak negatively about, not to disassociate ourselves from. Who cares about vileness coming from those calling themselves conservatives? I do. So should everyone who wants to give that name an honorable meaning.

If it's just trolls, it's probably not real because a serious troll is a psychologically damaged person who will say and do anything to torment someone like that. It's like a playground bully, but a lot worse.

I suppose it's also Erick Erickson's fault that he has to have bodyguards sit in his front driveway because of the threats he's getting. Oh, but I shouldn't have said that. Now I will have to see your pixels talking about how it _is_ Erickson's fault, how he brought it upon himself, and how anyway, nobody's _actually_ attacked his family yet, so it isn't worth bringing up and he's overreacting and whining

I wouldn't say that because people generally don't hire bodyguards without a credible threat. Shapiro, has to my knowledge, received nothing at all comparable to that. It is still just mean words said against his fragile feelings. Though I suspect his ego is actually more empowered than bruised by it all as it's great promotional material for him, whereas with Erickson, Roosh, Cernovich and other rightists who actually have had serious threats that lead to real security concerns it is not as much fun and games.

This is the world we live in. Watch what BLM did, in full view of the police, to Milo Yiannopoulos in Chicago. There is no room for people who want to sit around and cry about hurt feelings when actual threats to people's lives and well-being are being made and acted upon. That's why I said, when someone actually threatens Shapiro on the level of Erickson, Roosh, Cernovich, etc. I'll pay attention and be sympathetic.

You will make excuses for any evil on the self-described right, perhaps short of *actually* physically attacking someone.

After your last post on abortion, you have no business throwing around the issue of making excuses for evil.

There are actual anti-Semites in every camp. Trump does seem to have become the one they've latched onto this cycle. Shapiro frequently attacks Trump and Trump's supporters, so he is going to attract anti-Semitic attention. That's a fact of life. The venn diagram of "alt-right and Trump supporters" is not exactly one big circle. There are plenty of blue dog democrats who come from backgrounds like working class Catholic that are notorious for real anti-Semitism. You might want to keep that in mind.

A while back, there was a conveniently timed strike against Clinton supporters by "Bernie bros." Misogynist socialists who stumped from Bernie. No one was really surprised when all of the evidence pointed to them being Clinton operatives. Remember, on the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog.

Misogyny was declare epidemic, feminists (Sarkeesian, Wu and others) were fleeing for their lives.

The chan subculture is routinely grotesquely vile. I know Gamergate also involved Reddit and obviously Twitter, but there is a very good reason everyone considers chans to be the sewers of the internet. If you want to melt your brain in filth, that's where you go.

Then you have the fact that you can almost instantly dismiss any outrageous act of hate allegedly targeting minorities today as a hoax and be proved right within a few months. Literally almost not a single one in the last decade or more has turned out to be true; it's all a false flag by the left against its enemies.

Their statistics only go to 2014 which had the lowest rates of the entire decade, but according to the FBI there was an average of 6770 hate crime incidents per year for the previous ten years. When you exclude hate crimes against whites (~11%) and Christians (~4%) and then factor out those classified as intimidation (~30%) you are still looking at over 4000 incidents each year. Are you claiming that nearly all of 40,000 incidents targeting minorities over a decade were false flag operations by the left?

Misogynist socialists who stumped from Bernie. No one was really surprised when all of the evidence pointed to them being Clinton operatives.

Sanders himself called out a subset of his supporters for their misogynistic behavior, but what does he know about his own followers? He’s been duped by those Clinton operatives!

Their statistics only go to 2014 which had the lowest rates of the entire decade, but according to the FBI there was an average of 6770 hate crime incidents per year for the previous ten years. When you exclude hate crimes against whites (~11%) and Christians (~4%) and then factor out those classified as intimidation (~30%) you are still looking at over 4000 incidents each year. Are you claiming that nearly all of 40,000 incidents targeting minorities over a decade were false flag operations by the left?

I was referring to the ones that become public spectacles. Most "hate crimes" are also subjective by their very nature. All it takes to turn an ordinary felony assault into a hate crime is to use racist language. The FBI also has been long known to play games with the stats like label Hispanic victims as a separate category while labeling Hispanic perpetrators as white.

Sanders himself called out a subset of his supporters for their misogynistic behavior, but what does he know about his own followers? He’s been duped by those Clinton operatives!

And some of the "Bernie Bros" were still a false flag. The point is that it is easy to defame your opposition on the Internet and so anyone who just jumps in and assumes that they can take everything at face value is going to be wrong more than right. In fact with Twitter and Twitter bots, any mildly competent person could just write an Ansible script to continuously send out new statements and accounts to target with bile all day and most people would probably not even notice. In fact, I would not be entirely surprised to find that 2/3 of Shapiros's anti-semitic attacks come from one sock puppeteering troll.

After your last post on abortion, you have no business throwing around the issue of making excuses for evil.

Aaaand, descent to distraction. Squirrel!! I highly recommend that you don't try to keep up that kind of thread-jacking. I realize you and your friends didn't like one of my posts. You also didn't even bother to try to come and argue with me man-to-man on my thread, perhaps because I had turned on comments moderation. Maybe you figured I wouldn't post your comments. Whatever. That's fine. That's your choice, just as it was my choice to turn on moderation.

But I can tell you *for sure* that you aren't going to be allowed to thread-jack another thread for purposes of distracting from the topic at hand in that thread and from your own never-ending special pleading for the radical unimportance (to the point that we shouldn't even mention it) of the despicable behavior of the alt-right.

Please notice that it's also yelling "squirrel" to throw in stuff about hoaxes into a comment about the anti-semitism against Shapiro, since you apparently aren't actually saying (wonder of wonders) that Shapiro has made up hoaxes against himself. It's just blathering to distract attention from the fact that you don't like it when we )(or anybody) condemn vileness on the self-styled right.

As for Shapiro's "hurt feelings," I've never said that, and neither has he. Heck, he makes dark jokes about it.

The point is not his "hurt feelings." The point is: Who are we? We conservatives need to decide that, realize that, recognize that there are those who want to use conservatism for advertising their own vile ideas, and recognize that this *isn't* who we want to be.

You, Mike T., don't recognize that. You prefer to sit around smirking and thinking of purveyors of vileness as doing some kind of necessary dirty work for "us," that all-important work of "not being too nice," while you spend (fairly large amounts of) your time special pleading, arguing with, and annoying anybody who condemns vileness on the self-styled right.

"The point is: Who are we? We conservatives need to decide that, realize that, recognize that there are those who want to use conservatism for advertising their own vile ideas, and recognize that this *isn't* who we want to be."

Quite frankly, I too am getting tired of Mike T's "defense" of the alt-right -- I didn't really write this post to argue about them or their ideas, with the one exception. Instead, like Lydia, I'm interested in what is true and beautiful and how conservatives can advance the common good politically. My goal in this post was to argue that there is room for a politics that takes account of our racial/ethnic identity, but it must be done in a spirit of Christian charity and for Americans it should be done in conjunction with the best of our constitutional, republican ideals.

Over the past year I've been on quite a few alt-right websites and/or read alt-right writers -- many mock the American constitution, they reject Christianity, and they write as if they are filled with racial/ethnic hate. That is why I reject most of them, don't want them as allies, don't want to associate with them, and find their growing popularity troubling. Mike T has already explained why he disagrees -- we've all heard enough. This is an official warning from me, the guy who wrote the original post, to end the off topic discussion of why the conservative movement should embrace the alt-right.

Yes, Lydia, I am afraid to debate with you. Just as my reference to abortion has no relevance to this comment of Jeff's

Or with respect to social mores over the past 50 years (where again you might have a stronger case, although here you would have to at least discuss the role of the courts in our political life, how this role has changed, and how conservatives have been trying to fight back against this new political role?) Just what does is this statement supposed to mean?

You, Mike T., don't recognize that. You prefer to sit around smirking and thinking of purveyors of vileness as doing some kind of necessary dirty work for "us," that all-important work of "not being too nice," while you spend (fairly large amounts of) your time special pleading, arguing with, and annoying anybody who condemns vileness on the self-styled right.

Any objective reading of this thread would conclude in acknowledging that the main person visibly annoyed is you. Furthermore, as I have repeatedly pointed out, Shapiro is not exactly known for his own sterling character in treating others. He is, by your own standards, "vile" in how he treated is former colleagues and employer. He also won't even man up and apologize (that I am aware of) for being proved wrong by the complete collapse of Fields' case against Trump. But hey, let's pretend that that never happened. Let's make this Manichean because seeing shades of grey is for dogs and the color blind.

This is an official warning from me, the guy who wrote the original post, to end the off topic discussion of why the conservative movement should embrace the alt-right.

Fair enough. And when the dust settles, don't be surprised to find yourselves surrounded by wolves in sheep's clothing**. In my lifetime, the conservative movement has betrayed almost everything I was taught to believe a conservative was, and every time I hear a No True Scotsman fallacy used as the excuse. I never accepted that from the hard left and won't accept that from mainstream conservatives now.

**Jeff, look up Dalrock if you want to see some really good examples of why I am unimpressed with the argument that the Alt-Right is particularly vile while the mainstream conservative movement doesn't have its own deep-seated problems with spreading vile ideas.

Not in the sense that he means it, Terry. Don't be taken in by Mike T. You can bear in mind that, as he means it, _we_ are supposedly part of (or at least verging on)the "betrayal" of which he speaks, for a whole variety of reasons, including the remarks we have made here in this very thread about having no truck with the evil on the new self-styled "right." We can discuss (some other time, some other place) various meanings and the truth or falsehood of that sentence taken as a contextless utterance. But Mike T. is a troll and not to be encouraged. Just read the thread, get informed about what he's been defending, and that will speak for itself.

Here's an example. I am pro-life and believe abortion is homicide. Yet to many "conservatives" people like me are part of the problem because we just don't appreciate things like why "kill the baby or I'll leave you" is a valid reason to let a woman off the hook for killing an innocent life. To paraphrase Chris Rock:

You'll hear a pro-lifer giving women credit for things they is supposed to do. You'll hear a pro-life conservative say, that baby momma ain't never killed any of her kids. You ain't supposed to kill your kids, you low expectation-havin [you can probably fill in the blank...].

You can bear in mind that, as he means it, _we_ are supposedly part of (or at least verging on)the "betrayal" of which he speaks, for a whole variety of reasons

Terry, regardless of what she says, I meant that point as you seem to have taken it. I've seen conservatives prioritize foreign wars over our borders, condemn pro-life hard liners for being cruel and heartless, start supporting big government at home, apologize for gay marriage and a host of other things. I was a teenager when liberals started declaring that state self-defense laws don't apply to students under violent assault, and conservatives didn't do anything to push for laws to allow young people to defend themselves; more than once I had to decide between exercising my lawful rights and having my school year ruined with possibly disastrous consequences for my college admission. Now that they're turning schools into full on indoctrination centers, where your kid can get raped and beaten up, do we see a mass exodus to build alternatives? Heck no.

I look at what Milo Yiannopoulos is doing on his "Dangerous Faggot Tour" (yes, that's the real name) and ask why it took a flaming homosexual, quasi-libertarian from Britain to actually stand up to a feminist on an American campus and respond to her demands for self-censorship and self-abasement with forceful derision.

I'm sympathetic to your position, Mike. Very sympathetic, in point of fact. However, on the abortion issue you said that you've seen conservatives,

condemn pro-life hard liners for being cruel and heartless

I have seen the same things you've seen, which is why I'm sympathetic to your position on mainstream conservatism, such that it is. I will, however, defend Lydia's position on the matter in question (how properly to deal with abortion given the current climate), and refer to her post on the topic at her personal blog wherein I participated in the discussion.

I would recommend reading some of Zippy's posts on the matter in response to some of these arguments.

There are obviously a lot of constitutional and moral issues at play in how to outlaw abortion on demand and deal with the cleanup. I don't see anyone calling for repealing parts of the constitution to make it easier or even possible to inflict bloody vengeance regarding past abortions. A lot of the legal arguments are both valid and beside the point; no one is going to seriously try to get the prohibition on ex post facto laws repealed so we can selectively prosecute women who've had abortions. Not only is that unjust, but it's imprudent on a very dangerous level.

According to the mainstream, if we got it outlawed tomorrow there would be some serious moral problems with prosecuting women who seek one starting after that point. It is ironic that Trump, in his attempt to parrot social conservatism, actually revealed that to everyone watching by innocently suggesting that if we outlaw a thing, we must have a consequence attached to it that applies after the date the law goes into effect.

Something important to keep in mind (I raised this elsewhere), is that abortion is an issue in which conservatives cannot rely on tradition so much as the objective moral nature of the act. The reason why is that past societies did not have to deal with abortion the way we do. Until modern times, there was never an age in which an abortion was anything resembling a safe act. During the middle ages, trying to abort a baby would involve a process that is probably about as dangerous as playing Russian Roulette (literally) if not more so to the mother. When abortion is almost as likely to result in suicide as ending an unwanted pregnancy, it tends to be both a more self-correcting problem (from society's perspective) and something which strongly disinclines most women from seeking one. So the seemingly looser standards for dealing with it in the past have to be kept in that perspective.

You’ve been warned not to continue to comment on the subject of why the conservative movement should embrace the alt-right. But like a moth to flame, you just can’t help yourself. Indeed, you have a very bad habit of cluttering up many of our posts with irrelevant comments (e.g. re-arguing the issue of how to appropriately punish the crime of abortion on this post, which has nothing to do with abortion) whenever the mood suits you. It is going to stop because henceforth, you are now banned from What’s Wrong with the World.

I (and I know I'm not alone) have gotten tired of issuing you warnings and policing your rhetoric. I’m sure you’ll be welcomed with open arms at Vox’s website or other alt-right hang-outs. My own recommendation is that you stay away from such websites as they seem to be corrupting your soul.

You're banning Mike T? I always thought he had an interesting perspective on things (although I'm no fan of the "Manosphere"). Also, when one considers who hasn't been banned (e.g. Babinski, Step2) it seems rather like "turn right and fire". Anywho, just my two cents. Have a nice day Jeffrey :)

Most of 'what's wrong with the world', if you don't mind me using the phrase, indeed tends to fall within the broad category of the political Left or within the problematic beliefs of Muslims. We post and 'turn our fire' against these enemies almost daily. That doesn't mean that from time to time error worth mentioning or commenting on might arise from what could be considered the Right.

I too once enjoyed (some) of Mike T's contributions to this website -- but in my humble opinion he was increasingly becoming a pest. He just couldn't stop talking about his hobby horses whether the post warranted the discussion or not. Or whether he was warned or not. And it was even worse in this situation as I wrote a couple of comments about why I didn't particularly want to argue over the appropriateness of the alt-right and he kept commenting on why conservatives should make common cause with the alt-right. He is incorrigible. And as we say in our posting guidelines:

"If the reader suspects that this amounts to a “we’re right, you’re wrong” policy, he may well be right. But let him rest assured that respect and propriety will not return void. With our adversaries we can still hope to achieve a courteous clarity of disagreement, and even a mutual admiration: but this can only be done in forthright civility."

Respect and propriety were absent from many of Mike T's comments lately -- which is why he needed to go.

Apparently you have the same kind of reading comprehension problems that your friend Crude has. This post wasn't primarily about why the alt-right is horrible; I was much more interested in talking about ideas versus identity.

For whatever reason, Mike T was not that interested in discussing that topic. Instead, we had a fairly civil conversation with him about the alt-right -- which was not my preferred outcome, but so be it, and the discussion is there for everyone to read. And then as usual (because he has a history of doing this) when Mike refused to stop talking about the topic, after we asked him (because we were going around in circles at that point) he was banned.

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